Irish Catholic Anger Rages

Sidewalks

THE argument among Irish Catholics over politics, sex abuse and the sacraments rage on, and is not likely to cool off anytime soon.

Last week, Long Island Congressman (and Catholic) Peter King blasted a Vatican official who suggested that the prisoner abuse scandal dealing with U.S. soldiers in Iraq has been worse for America than the 9/11 attacks.

King said: “If there’s anyone in the world who has no right to speak on sexual abuse, it’s the Vatican. This is the height of hypocrisy.”

He added: “Think of the thousands of kids in the U.S. and Ireland who were abused by priests and nuns - you wonder where the Vatican’s moral compass is. Whatever the United States has done to prisoners in Iraq is nothing compared to what priests and nuns did to Catholic kids for decades while the Catholic hierarchy covered it up.”

In an interview published in the Rome daily La Repubblica, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo described the Iraq soldier abuses as “a tragic episode in the relationship with Islam.” 

He added: “The torture? A more serious blow to the United States than Sept. 11. Except that the blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by Americans against themselves.” 

Congressman King’s angry rebuttal comes just as the Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs issued a highly controversial pastoral letter suggesting that Catholics should not receive communion if they vote for politicians who defy church teaching on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

“Anyone who professes the Catholic faith with his lips while at the same time publicly supporting legislation or candidates that defy God’s law makes a mockery of that faith and belies his identity as a Catholic,” Bishop Michael J. Sheridan wrote.

In an interview with the New York Times, Bishop Sheridan added: “I’m not making a political statement. I’m making a statement about church teaching.”

All this comes as debate rages over Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a practicing Catholic who is also pro-choice. Some church officials think Kerry, essentially, is not Catholic enough given some of his liberal views.

But prominent Irish Catholics have been calling out church officials for being strict on Kerry, while not pursuing sexual abuse sinners in the priesthood.

Next month, prepare for the latest angry missive from famed New York Irish journalist Jimmy Breslin. 

His next book is the not-so-subtly titled The Church That Forgot Jesus. Published by Free Press, sources tell the Irish Voice the book is unrelenting in its criticism of the church.

The book is not yet available. According to Free Press, “After a lifetime of attending mass every Sunday, Breslin has severed his ties to the church he once loved, and, in this important book, filled with a fury generated by a sense of betrayal, he explains why.”

The publisher adds: “When the church sex scandals emerged relentlessly in recent years, and when it became apparent that these scandals had been covered up by the church hierarchy, Breslin found it impossible to reconcile his faith with this new reality. 

“Ever the reporter, he visited many victims of molestation by priests and found lives in emotional chaos. He questioned the bishops and found an ossified clergy that has a sense of privilege and entitlement. Thus disillusioned with his church, though not with his faith, he writes about the loss of moral authority yet uses his trademark mordant humor to good effect. 

Using “righteous anger,” Breslin supports married and female priests, notes that Christ wore sandals “not gold vestments and rings,” and argues that the Catholic Church needs “a healthy dose of Christianity.”

None other than Rev. Richard P. McBrien, the Crowley-O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has praised Breslin’s book, saying: “Among the growing number of books occasioned by the tragic sexual-abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, Jimmy Breslin’s surely has a niche all its own. Some will accuse him of ‘attacking the church,’ but his sharp and often angry criticisms are directed at its pastoral leaders and institutional modes of behavior, which he castigates with the force of a ‘truck’s backfire,’ to use one of his own phrases. In the end, Breslin will do more to advance the long-term good of the church than those who walk the well-trodden path of defensiveness and denial.”

Stay tuned.

Contact at tdeignan@irishvoice.com .